This interview appeared in the Spring, ‘03 “Phoenix Rising”, a free, quarterly newsletter created and distributed by Phoenix Institute, Inc., Samuel's homebase in Lexington, Kentucky.

Discover what Samuel has to say on topics that include health, diet, guardianship energy, justification, vegetarianism, organic food, the fusion of masculine and feminine energy, and more!

Last year, several people wrote to Phoenix Rising expressing concerns about illness and injury, particularly among the Guardianship. The beginning of a new year seems like a good time to discuss health—what it is and how we maintain it.

Phoenix Rising:  How would you define health for those of us who deal with the laws of form?

Samuel:   What I see as health and what I see as health in regard to form are two different things. That is because wholeness is what you always want to be seeking. When you send energy to somebody who is not well, for instance, you are sending wholeness their way, the thought of wholeness, the frequency or resonance, if you will, of wholeness that completes—fills in—whatever it is within their greater energy that needs boosting at that time.

Now wholeness, or health, speaks of a completion much greater than only the physical body or only the emotional self, one of the many pieces that make up the experience here. Health speaks of a fully activated being.

What does good health mean in regard to form? From your perspective, good health means that you feel good enough to be capable of doing what you wish to do. That is the doorway to many, many problems, many misconceptions.

From my perspective, though, health is being what you are here to be, and when your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies are functioning in unity, you will be better able to be what you are here to be. Therefore I give suggestions about how to function at the highest and best level that your physical essence is capable of so that you will better be able to be what you are here to be. Do I need to go further with that?

Well, I’m interested in exploring your comment that our perspective of good health “opens the doorway into many misconceptions.” What kind of misconceptions are you talking about?

It’s one of those things that is so simple it’s easily missed. You think that good health is the ability to do what you wish to do. The reason that that’s a problem is that what you desire most of the time is probably not related at all to what is actually going on in the world, what is actually going on in your greater purpose, what’s actually going on in the greater Plan.

As long as you, as a human, feel like you’re able to do what you want to do, you think you’re all right. As soon as you’re not able to do what you want to do, you think it’s awful, even if it is the result of the intervention of the Universe itself keeping you from making a terrible mistake or keeping you from breaking a compact, whatever. As a result of “it’s awful,” you begin to question yourself, you begin a process of thinking or being or doing that starts breaking down the body tremendously. Now, that’s what I meant by saying it’s very simple. It’s easy to miss, but it’s very obvious; it’s very much right there in front of you.

As long as you are judging how you are by how you feel, then every issue that you have in the physical world is going to rule you.

There are things you can do to feel better. There are things you can do to think better. There are things you can do that will enhance your physical body so that it works better. And those things are not about optimizing your health; they’re about optimizing your wholeness so that you can better be what you are here to be.

Why is staying healthy important when we come with pre-determined portals to leave form anyway and illness is often our way out?

And very simply, the answer is that the spirit you are cannot work in form for a very long time. This earth is rapidly completing its function as a planetary being and since all life force upon it is also a part of that evolutionary path—which is very much in fast-forward now—the rate of decay has shifted, too. That’s a part of a great shift that has gone on dimensionally, as well.

As a result of that, you don’t have the ability to live two or three hundred years. Beings that have come into this dimension of form for probably the last thousand to fifteen hundred years or so have not had that available to them because of the progression of energy.

So you’re not saying this energy that’s coming now around the fusion has changed our expected life span; you’re saying it’s been going on for a much longer time.

The energy of fusion has changed it, but that’s a separate change altogether. I’m saying that if you’re going to be in form, you’re going to be in form only for a short period of time. It was longer once than it is right now, but because of very many changes that really have nothing to do with this question, decay, or the diffusion of energy, happens more quickly than it did a couple of thousand years ago, a couple of million years ago, whatever. That means that you’re not going to live to be three hundred; you might live to be one hundred. You might; you might not.

Guardianship energy does not tend to be long-lived because it’s here for a specific purpose. Once that purpose is complete, you’re gone. The completion is the final portal. Prior to that time there are other portals that are available. Most Guardians do not wait until the final portal. Let me change that. Most activated Guardians do not wait until the final portal.

If your form did not decay, if it did not wind down, if it did not age, if it did not step in front of cars or get ill, you would not be able to leave, and you don’t want to be stuck here once your work is done. So it’s all a part of the process of form working as spirit inside a body. It’s part of that plan. And for those I’m working with, it’s necessary so that you don’t burn yourself and the work out by being here too long.

What behaviors do you see individuals engaging in that have a detrimental effect on their health, and what kinds of things would you suggest focusing on instead?

I would break that up into physical health—meaning the physical body itself—mental health, emotional health, and spiritual health insofar as the soul is concerned.

What I see is people failing to keep flexible. They do not keep active, and staying active in all ways is the key in every one of those areas.

In a perfect situation, you would exercise the body, the mind, and the emotions. You would stretch your mind. You would push your boundaries, which would affect your emotions. You would be flexible in your physical body. You would recognize the importance of the body as the vessel for your work here. You would optimize its abilities in all of those areas by not eating those things that create difficulty for it. You would optimize the mental body by doing those things that sharpen the mind, the memory, activation of the autonomic nervous system. You would do those things that enhance emotional flexibility—and that really is a key to all of the others. And you would feed the spiritual self so that it was stronger.

In a very real sense, “food” is a key—feeding the spirit, feeding the mind, feeding the body. Take a moment and think about feeding. Feeding involves your belief system, feeding involves your emotional responses, feeding involves a full sensory synthesis and as a result is a perfect example of wholeness.

For a moment, think about food. Are there things that you cannot eat?

Yes, there are lots of things.

Actually, there’s not. There are no foods you cannot eat; there are foods you should not eat. And I said that because the first issue with food is that you have a choice. You can eat this, but you must be willing to accept the consequences if you do. Therefore, you choose not to eat it because you do not want the consequences. And that is a pattern that follows you all through your life. It begins the moment you draw air, and it ends the moment your spirit returns.

Food, therefore, becomes a major obstacle to health, because it is an issue that is so tied into the security of the physical, the mental and the emotional.

In a perfect world, you would not eat that which is close to you on the food chain. The farther away from it you can eat the better. You would not eat that which has a brain—period. You would not eat that which has a brain. Why? Because that means that it has a resonance with you, and because of that it is going to affect your resonance, your frequency.

The resonance in the milk of the cow is a totally different thing than the cow. That’s why I don’t have a problem with dairy products. You might find that for you, personally, dairy is a problem, which is why there are things you have to work out on your own. But working it out doesn’t mean asking, “Should I eat the cow or not?” You should not. It’s asking, “Should I eat the products of the cow or not?” That’s where your decision-making comes in.

The plant kingdom: Everything upon this planet, every bit of life force on the planet that is not ensouled but is a function of the planet itself—the plant kingdom—is open to you fully. That means its resonance will work to bring about wholeness for the body itself, will work to provide you with good health. All of it.

And here, let me anticipate a question: “Samuel, does that include such things as the poppy kingdom?” because there are those that would ask it, you know. It does not include the distillation and addition of chemicals and what poppies are made into, but rather the whole poppy, the poppy as it is in nature. Heroin and cocaine are not natural substances that are good for you, but chewing the coca leaves, while illegal in this society, is not harmful to you. Access to them is restricted [by law], so they’re restricted to you. Plants are here for a reason, but you can make it so that they’re not good for you.

You have choices about what you do. In a perfect world, you choose not to put into your body those things that are going to cause your energy, frequency, resonance to be harmed.

When you put into your physical body that which puts a cap on your frequency, such as meat and fish, it also has an effect upon your mental and emotional bodies. Can you understand that? Can you see why?

We aren’t just physical beings. Everything interconnects. So, if something happens to the physical it usually leaks into the emotional, and on and on.

And the reason it leaks through is that you don’t have the vitality, the frequency, to overcome it. And you don’t have it because you have limited what you can do by putting into that body something that holds it back.

So what you’re saying is that the ceiling or cap stops that energy coming in which could lead you towards wholeness.

Right. Exactly. So your emotional self responds to that loss, and of course it responds to loss by taking security measures, and on and on that goes.

But what about those people who eat meat because they think it makes them feel better, which they see as healthier?

I’ll tell you something a little surprising. I make a lot of jokes about the Form’s [Lea’s] sugar consumption. What are those little things she eats?

They’re little candies called Hot Tamales.

Hot Tamales are really a very worthless food. They are sugar and cinnamon and I suppose preservatives of many sorts. There is some sort of wax in there. It is better to fill your body with Hot Tamales than it is with meat, because Hot Tamales do not get in the way of your Guardianship, and meat does.

I work with Guardians in human form, and because of that, there are certain concessions that are necessary while a Guardian is moving from awakening to activation. Those concessions generally have to do with allowing adaptation. I would love to be able to touch you on the forehead and automatically fully awaken in every cell of your being a rule book that says, “Do this and everything will be all right.” Of course, for the last three thousand years your world has had versions of that, and they have only created ways to misuse power.

When you are awakening to Guardianship energy, you are dealing with high-level security crises in many, many areas of your life. You are being polished tremendously. Your issues are all coming up. You are being perfected, made aware, and conscious in ways that mass consciousness does not even conceive of. When you are going through that process, why pile on more difficulties and more decisions?

Because of that, I say to those who are awakening to their spiritual potential, “Make your own decisions, and be aware that these things will happen naturally as you continue along the path.” Do I think that those instructions have been misused? Yes! Tremendously. Rather than helping, it has become a justification, a means by which someone can say, “Well, I’ve never wanted to change. That must mean I do not need to,” forgetting all that I have said about limiting your vibratory frequency and the frequency of energy that comes into you by eating animals—the animals of the land, the animals of the sea, it does not matter.

You said, “you limit your energy,” and I think you also said earlier that that means you limit the frequency of energy that comes into you.

That’s correct—both ways. But when you’re in form, the only one that matters to you is what you can accomplish, rather than what you can maintain and hold and be.

You want to be able to do stuff. Nobody loves it when I say, “You don’t have to know that you’re doing. You are doing. Your energy alone has an effect.” But the fact is that’s because of what you’re able to draw through you. And when you have a filter on what you can draw through you, you are less effective in this world.

But that’s not a conscious thing. The conscious thing is “I can know more, I can do more things, I can create magical effects in the world, I can leave my body while I dream, I can manifest money when I want it.” Well, you can’t do those things when the physical body is unable to move beyond a certain ceiling. So it also has an effect on that.

I have always said those things, but they are conveniently forgotten when somebody wants to justify their indulgence of the form. They justify their indulgence of their physical selves by ignoring that they do just fine without eating those things.

When they have justified their behavior by saying, “Well, I just don’t feel good if I don’t eat …,” maybe what they’re actually experiencing is just withdrawal from all of the trash they have been putting into their bodies. Actually, they think the problems they’re having mean they don’t feel good because they need meat or whatever, but, just as if they were hooked on heroin, they’re actually just waiting for the next fix of trash in their bodies. You fill your body with vibrational trash. You stop doing it and you say, “I feel bad,” so you go back to the trash. If you would just work through that, you would feel much better than you did before the trash.

I will assure you that eating your brothers is not helping your energy. Eating what was given to you for food—the plant kingdom—does. I cannot agree at all with anyone who says. “I am a Guardian, activated and working at my highest frequency AND I eat shrimp and chicken,” or “I eat salmon, because that’s a cold, deep-water fish, and Samuel said that was okay.” When did I say that? You see?

Eating animals—yes, even fish—and being a Guardian don’t go together. If you are eating the one, you are not being the other. You would do better to fill your body with detrimental substances like alcohol and sugar, and you would be able to do more spiritually than you can when you eat creatures.

Now, that’s a pretty shocking statement, and so I want to temper it a bit, because I don’t recommend that you put destructive things like alcohol and sugar into your body either—moderation, please. Know what your body can and cannot take.

If you are now functioning at a more sensitive rate and you know it, well then, take a look at your diet. In the very same way that I say money issues come up at the beginning and then again at the end of your spiritual development, food does also, because it is the first choice you always have in your life. It’s the ultimate, number-one thing you can control.

It’s complicated because we attach so many emotional issues to food.

Precisely, and you attach the emotional issues because the food is putting a ceiling on what you can do. Otherwise you would be able to move beyond it and it would not affect you emotionally.

A plant-based diet is fully capable of sustaining you at your most vital, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. A plant-based diet with the addition of byproducts of living creatures—and the key word there is living—does not limit the vitality. It may not add to it, but it will not limit it. You can be totally healthy, have all the protein you need, all the amino acids you need, with a plant-based diet.

At one time you mentioned that if we were going to use milk, cheese, eggs and things like that, we should use organic products. Is that still true?

Simply because your society has really filthy standards, and most people do not realize it. Really filthy.

We think the government is taking care of it, watching out for us, and they’re not.

No. Of course, your body deals with that well, because you’ve dealt with it since you were very, very young, but if there is a choice between a product that is organically grown or agribusiness-grown, I would suggest you go for the consciousness of the organic.

Some health problems seem to be in our blueprint, while others are self-imposed or even experienced due to circumstances outside of our control, such as bacteria in water that was supposed to be safe. Is there a difference between mastering these various types of health challenges?

I often see two responses to illness: Making it a badge of honor and making it a sign of weakness. Sounds like extremes, doesn’t it?

A badge of honor is saying, “People who are functioning at their highest spiritual natures are just so sensitive that they cannot really function well in this world. I’m having all of these troubles because I’m so spiritual.” Well, you may be having those troubles because you are so spiritual, but your reaction to them is unnecessarily dramatic.

The sign of weakness is, “I am sick and if I were truly spiritual I would not be sick, because true spirituality is wholeness and illness is not wholeness.”

And both of those responses leave out the fact that you’ve got to have a way out of here. Everything in this world that is form breaks down. And there are very, very many gifts—shortcuts, in fact—that can come to the master through illness. That’s why illness can be in the blueprint: having the handicap, so to speak, having the accelerated breakdown, is going to refocus your priorities—at least it can refocus your priorities.

In your life here as a Guardian, you have one great rule to live by, my golden rule, which is “Do the best you can where you are with what you have at the time.” You can do the best you can—following all the rules of good hygiene—and disaster happens anyway; you still get a cold. What does that mean? It means you’ve got a cold. It means you have an opportunity before you to choose your response. It means the same thing as when you walk out of your front door and the wind hits you in the face. It means the wind hits you in your face. You’re at the right place at the right time and you got it.

And there is the version in which you’re born with the gene that makes you more likely to have heart problems later in life. All right, you have a choice there, too. If you know about it, then your choice is to try to do those things that will keep you at your healthiest. In this society, that is not eating a lot of highly saturated fats, so that your circulatory system has a better chance of keeping you healthy. Or you have a tendency toward high cholesterol, so you do those things that help you avoid high cholesterol. It’s a choice you make. You can just as well choose not to do that, and then you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of it, if there are any.

You also may not know that you have this genetic predisposition, and all you do know is, “I just had a heart attack.” And you still have a choice.

And the commonality between all of these versions is that, when it happens, you have a choice. That’s what your whole life is about: choices. Everything is about how you choose to act in order to fulfill “doing the best you can, where you are, with what you have at the time.”

So I shouldn’t be spending time worrying about whether this is in my blueprint. I have to look at what is happening and decide what am I going to choose to do in response to it.

Right. Let’s use something that’s even more deadly than cholesterol as an example—a bleeding disorder, for instance. You did not know you had a problem until you cut yourself and bled. There are all kinds of responses. You can have little bits of bleeding that you can take care of right away, or you can just bleed out and die. You have a choice. You can spend your whole life in a bubble. You can spend your whole life making sure you never get nicked or touched, lest you die. Or you can learn how to cope with it when it happens, and do your best to keep yourself out of those situations that are likely to hurt you. You don’t go barefoot through the jungle, and when you do go through the jungle you get yourself as padded as you can before you do it. You do the best you can where you are with what you have at the time. And where you are with what you have at the time does not mean you put yourself into situations that are going to make it worse for you. But if you do, you’re doing it consciously for a purpose, and you’re willing to accept the consequences.

You see, I just don’t see illness as deserving the judgment it gets. It’s a part of being here.

With the energy of 5:3:2 and the fusion of masculine and feminine energy, is there anything we should be doing differently to maintain our health?

Yes, actually, 5:3:2 changes everything, because the rules in 4:3:2 do not necessarily work in 5:3:2. In 5:3:2 you can’t follow the same patterns, and that applies to health, too.

In 5:3:2, in which the fusion has come into play, it is more necessary than ever that Guardianship energy function at its highest possible frequency, as activated as it can be. What that means is that it is more important than ever before that you do not do those things that can put a limit on your frequency. If you have been indulging yourself or justifying eating meat or eating fish, stop. If you have been justifying not exercising, not becoming more flexible and stronger, stop. Everybody can do something to make themselves healthier—healthier physically, healthier mentally, healthier emotionally, healthier spiritually. There is something that you can do that will make you better.

n 5:3:2 you have more power to make those changes than you did in 4:3:2. It will be much easier. You will be amazed at what you can do simply by setting your mind to it. You can say “I do not eat tuna fish any more,” and your body immediately begins moving to where it doesn’t desire it. You say to yourself, “I’m going to start exercising.” In 4:3:2 you would walk around the block and you would be absolutely worn out, and it would discourage you and you would stop. In 5:3:2 you walk around the block and you may be winded, but you’re not defeated, because you know that you can do more, that you can connect into the greater body of strength. You have so much available to you now that there really aren’t any excuses. Well, there are plenty of excuses, but they’re not valid. They’re excuses, not reasons.

Click here to go to the Fall, ‘02 interview.
Click here to go to the Winter, ‘03 interview.